Owen Polley

​The government announced last week that a key part of the Windsor Framework, the new Irish Sea parcels’ border, would be postponed until March 2025.

Since Jeffrey Donaldson's arrest, the DUP have been on the ropes The DUP largely avoided humiliation at the polls in July, but the result was still chastening

​In an hour long leader’s speech at the Labour conference last week, Sir Keir Starmer found no room to mention Northern Ireland. In a sense, that was neither surprising nor particularly damning.

The former Taoiseach should have more humility L ast week, Leo Varadkar, former head of government of the Republic of Ireland, visited

​During the Brexit negotiations, Northern Ireland was often at the centre of national political debate.

The party responded appallingly to its press officer being accused of child sex offences

​In the News Letter last week, the think-tanker Roderick Crawford urged unionists to break out of the “echo chamber of self-pity” over the Windsor Framework.

​​During the DUP’s boycott of the executive, we were told repeatedly that it was overwhelmingly important to get Stormont back. Its return was portrayed as a solution to all kinds of problems and, for many politicians and commentators, devolution became the yardstick of whether Northern Ireland ‘worked’.

​​The Labour Party’s first budget for 14 years was leaked so heavily that some MPs felt there was little point listening to Rachel Reeves’ speech last Wednesday. The House of Commons’ speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, accused the chancellor of showing “supreme discourtesy” to her colleagues, by announcing important policies to, among others, TV interviewers in the US.

​Last week, the Conservative Party’s choice of leader was quickly pushed off the front pages by the US election result. Ultimately though, the Tory leadership contest is likely to have a far greater effect on local people’s lives.